Surface reconstruction of ancient water storage systems an approach for sparse 3D sonar scans and fused stereo images

This work presents a process pipeline that addresses the problem of reconstructing surfaces of underwater structures from stereo images and sonar scans collected with a micro-ROV on the islands of Malta and Gozo. Using a limited sensor load, sonar and small GoPro Hero2 cameras, the micro-ROV is able to explore water systems and gather data. As a preprocess to the reconstruction pipeline, a 3D evidence grid is created by mosaicing horizontal and vertical sonar scans. A volumetric representation is then constructed using a level set method. Fine-scale details from the scene are captured in stereo cameras, and are transformed into point clouds and projected into the volume. A raycasting technique is used to trim the volume in accordance with the projected point clouds, thus reintroducing fine details to the rough sonar-generated model. The resulting volume is surfaced, yielding a final mesh which can be viewed and interacted with for archaeological and educational purposes. Initial results from both steps of the reconstruction pipeline are presented and discussed.peer-reviewe

Musiktherapie zur Behandlung des akuten Tinnitus: Vorstellung des Forschungsdesigns und vorläufige Ergebnisse

Einleitung: Für Patienten mit akutem Tinnitus, die durch die initiale Standardtherapie entsprechend der AWMF-Leitlinien keine ausreichende Symptomreduktion erfahren haben, wird ein ergänzendes musiktherapeutisches Behandlungskonzept evaluiert. Dieses Behandlungskonzept zielt sowohl auf die neuronalen Grundlagen der Tinnitusentstehung als auch auf die dysfunktionalen Krankheitsverarbeitungsmechanismen der Patienten. Die Musiktherapie umfasst 10 Behandlungseinheiten, die im Rahmen einer Kompakttherapiewoche (Mo-Fr) stattfinden. Die Studie wurde von der Ethikkommission der Ärztekammer des Saarlandes genehmigt.Methode: In die Studie eingeschlossen werden n=40 Patienten mit akutem Tinnitus, bei denen die Ohrgeräusche nach der medikamentösen Akuttherapie weiterhin fortbestehen. Nach Abschluss der medikamentösen Akuttherapie ist eine Wartezeit von 4 Wochen erforderlich um sowohl Wash-out Effekte der Medikamentenwirkung als auch eine Spontanremission auszuschließen. Nach dieser Wartezeit durchlaufen alle Patienten die Musiktherapie, eine umfangreiche psychologische Verlaufsdiagnostik sowie 2 fMRT-Untersuchungen im Abstand von 7 Tagen. Patienten der Studiengruppe (n=20) erhalten die Musiktherapie zwischen beiden fMRT-Untersuchungen, Patienten der Wartekontrollgruppe (n=20) nach der zweiten fMRT-Untersuchung. Die Zuteilung zu beiden Gruppen erfolgt randomisiert.Ergebnisse und Schlussfolgerungen: Vorläufige Prä-Post-Vergleiche ergeben bei 73,3% der bisher behandelten Patienten eine signifikante Reduktion der Tinnitusbelastung im Tinnitusfragebogen (TF, Goebel und Hiller 1998). Erste Auswertungen des Tinnitus-Beeinträchtigungs-Fragebogens (TBF-12, Greimel et al. 2000) der Attention and Performance Self Assessment Scale (APSA, Görtelmeyer et al. 2010) sowie der fMRT-Daten werden präsentiert.Der Erstautor gibt keinen Interessenkonflikt an

Heidelberg Neuro-Music Therapy Restores Attention-Related Activity in the Angular Gyrus in Chronic Tinnitus Patients

Background: Tinnitus is the perception of a phantom sound without external acoustic stimulation. Recent tinnitus research suggests a relationship between attention processes and tinnitus-related distress. It has been found that too much focus on tinnitus comes at the expense of the visual domain. The angular gyrus (AG) seems to play a crucial role in switching attention to the most salient stimulus. This study aims to evaluate the involvement of the AG during visual attention tasks in tinnitus sufferers treated with Heidelberg Neuro-Music Therapy (HNMT), an intervention that has been shown to reduce tinnitus-related distress.Methods: Thirty-three patients with chronic tinnitus, 45 patients with recent-onset tinnitus, and 35 healthy controls were tested. A fraction of these (21/21/22) were treated with the “compact” version of the HNMT lasting 1 week with intense treatments, while non-treated participants were included as passive controls. Visual attention was evaluated during functional Magnet-Resonance Imaging (fMRI) by a visual Continous Performance Task (CPT) using letter-based alarm cues (“O” and “X”) appearing in a sequence of neutral letters, “A” through “H.” Participants were instructed to respond via button press only if the letter “O” was followed by the letter “X” (GO condition), but not to respond if a neutral letter appeared instead (NOGO condition). All participants underwent two fMRI sessions, before and after a 1-week study period.Results: The CPT results revealed a relationship between error rates and tinnitus duration at baseline whereby the occurrence of erroneous “GO omissions” and the reaction time increased with tinnitus duration. Patients with chronic tinnitus who were treated with HNMT had decreasing error rates (fewer GO omissions) compared to treated recent-onset patients. fMRI analyses confirmed greater activation of the AG during CPT in chronic patients after HNMT treatment compared to treated recent-onset patients.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that HNMT treatment helps shift the attention from the auditory phantom percept toward visual cues in chronic tinnitus patients and that this shift in attention may involve the AG

Heidelberg Neuro-Music Therapy Enhances Task-Negative Activity in Tinnitus Patients

Background: Suffering from tinnitus causes mental distress in most patients. Recent findings point toward a diminished activity of the brain's default-mode network (DMN) in subjects with mental disorders including depression or anxiety and also recently in subjects with tinnitus-related distress. We recently developed a therapeutic intervention, namely the Heidelberg Neuro-Music Therapy (HNMT), which shows an effective reduction of tinnitus-related distress following a 1-week short-term treatment. This approach offers the possibility to evaluate the neural changes associated with the improvements in tinnitus distress. We previously reported gray matter (GM) reorganization in DMN regions and in primary auditory areas following HNMT in cases of recent-onset tinnitus. Here we evaluate on the same patient group, using functional MRI (fMRI), the activity of the DMN following the improvements tinnitus-related distress related to the HNMT intervention.Methods: The DMN activity was estimated by the task-negative activation (TNA) during long inter-trial intervals in a word recognition task. The level of TNA was evaluated twice, before and after the 1-week study period, in 18 treated tinnitus patients (“treatment group,” TG), 21 passive tinnitus controls (PTC), and 22 active healthy controls (AC). During the study, the participants in TG and AC groups were treated with HNMT, whereas PTC patients did not receive any tinnitus-specific treatment. Therapy-related effects on DMN activity were assessed by comparing the pairs of fMRI records from the TG and PTC groups.Results: Treatment of the TG group with HNMT resulted in an augmented DMN activity in the PCC by 2.5% whereas no change was found in AC and PTC groups. This enhancement of PCC activity correlated with a reduction in tinnitus distress (Spearman Rho: −0.5; p < 0.005).Conclusion: Our findings show that an increased DMN activity, especially in the PCC, underlies the improvements in tinnitus-related distress triggered by HNMT and identify the DMN as an important network involved in therapeutic improvements

Structure and activity of the only human RNase T2

Mutations in the gene of human RNase T2 are associated with white matter disease of the human brain. Although brain abnormalities (bilateral temporal lobe cysts and multifocal white matter lesions) and clinical symptoms (psychomotor impairments, spasticity and epilepsy) are well characterized, the pathomechanism of RNase T2 deficiency remains unclear. RNase T2 is the only member of the Rh/T2/S family of acidic hydrolases in humans. In recent years, new functions such as tumor suppressing properties of RNase T2 have been reported that are independent of its catalytic activity. We determined the X-ray structure of human RNase T2 at 1.6 Å resolution. The α+β core fold shows high similarity to those of known T2 RNase structures from plants, while, in contrast, the external loop regions show distinct structural differences. The catalytic features of RNase T2 in presence of bivalent cations were analyzed and the structural consequences of known clinical mutations were investigated. Our data provide further insight into the function of human RNase T2 and may prove useful in understanding its mode of action independent of its enzymatic activity

Choroid plexus transcytosis and exosome shuttling deliver folate into brain parenchyma.

Loss of folate receptor-α function is associated with cerebral folate transport deficiency and childhood-onset neurodegeneration. To clarify the mechanism of cerebral folate transport at the blood–cerebrospinal fluid barrier, we investigate the transport of 5-methyltetrahydrofolate in polarized cells. Here we identify folate receptor-α-positive intralumenal vesicles within multivesicular bodies and demonstrate the directional cotransport of human folate receptor-α, and labelled folate from the basolateral to the apical membrane in rat choroid plexus cells. Both the apical medium of folate receptor-α-transfected rat choroid plexus cells and human cerebrospinal fluid contain folate receptor-α-positive exosomes. Loss of folate receptor-α-expressing cerebrospinal fluid exosomes correlates with severely reduced 5-methyltetrahydrofolate concentration, corroborating the importance of the folate receptor-α-mediated folate transport in the cerebrospinal fluid. Intraventricular injections of folate receptor-α-positive and -negative exosomes into mouse brains demonstrate folate receptor-α-dependent delivery of exosomes into the brain parenchyma. Our results unravel a new pathway of folate receptor-α-dependent exosome-mediated folate delivery into the brain parenchyma and opens new avenues for cerebral drug targeting